The sketch of the soul's destiny which Literalism has for ages popularised, has been like many a really valuable novel, portraying one's life in this world. The story is vivid, consistent, and at first sight convincing. But when one begins to take it very seriously, one discovers that, after all, it leaves the hero just at the turning-point of his career, and that there is still before him a path to traverse, in which he will assuredly have to face many a perplexity.

Second, the shadows which were taken by the venerators of Literalism to be real things, brought into estimation supposed accompaniments of the need which were fictitious. Of these the principal was the necessity of escape from the unspeakable place of torment. To very many who were guided by the old light, escape from that place became the sum and substance of the need. How could it be otherwise? What use for preachers to insist that what they wanted to save from was sin itself, not the consequences of sin? Consequences! If such consequences exist at all in the universe, these souls of ours, if they be not half-befogged, can but be paralysed, and think no longer calmly of anything else. The whole range of experience which the all-wise Ruler of the universe brings before us assures us that the hopeless place does not exist.

Our God is our refuge from the fear of it. But they who thought and taught that it did exist created for imagination a fictitious need.

The Bible itself must not be confused with Literalism on the matter of making conscious the need of a gospel. The Bible has a life of its own quite distinct from its being accepted in its sentences and phrases as the Divine authority. In this distinct life, the Bible is an expression of human experience, stretching down many generations. And as such, the Bible has been one of the most potent of the many influences beyond Literalism, which have helped to stimulate the consciousness of the need. The Bible contains the utterances of not less than fifty, and probably quite a hundred persons, reflecting the experience of millions of others, living through a period of not less than fifteen hundred years. And these utterances all bear witness to a need in the human spirit, diverse, profound, organic, universal.

It would be to go beyond the aim of this work to enter on the different influences which have brought an apprehension of Morality, sufficient to involve the consciousness of the need now under notice. The whole race may be said to have been so far roused to recognise the need, one individual pointing to another its various forms, and all thus becoming

the more acquainted with the elements of their common life.

Looking at the forms in which the need of a gospel appears, we may begin with those the most external. First there is the suffering of pain, weariness, disappointment, injustice. From the endurance of these things we cry out seeking help. The knowledge of God in relation to man brings the intuition of an ideal human life, in which we might not so suffer as we do.

To be mentioned along with ordinary suffering is the earthly climax of it all, death. From the mere loss of life we cry out, as we apprehend the Supreme Being who, though so distant from us in personality, has deigned to bestow upon us atoms of His spiritual

essence.

Deeper within us are the experiences of fallibility in understanding. We become oppressed both with the remembrance of the mistakes which we have made, and with the recognition of our liability to make more in the future. In women the admission of such weakness comes earlier, as a rule, than it does in men. Nature asserts itself in men against Morality. Man meets failure with new contrivances, and will not confess himself vanquished. But in time there grows in every man also the confession that he

is extremely fallible, and that, while his best successes might have been far better, his blunders and his continual stupidity are more marked than his power. And in such experience also there whispers a yearning towards what is beyond Nature.

Deeper still is the tendency to do evil with more or less knowledge that it is evil, or with more or less consent of the will. In the case of this also oppression ensues partly on regret at the past and partly on fear of lapses in the future. There have been no human beings who have claimed, or for whom others have claimed, an exemption from this tendency, except One. That it is right to regard One as having been pure, and free of the stains which others deplore, rests on a convincing general testimony which has come down the ages. But for his case an explanation has been wisely found in a special entry of the Divine Spirit into his being. All ordinary persons are regarded by sober judgment as possessing the tendency. Not that they necessarily have it all in the same proportion. Some are in time saved almost completely from intentional evil-doing. This, however, is not to deny the existence in them of the tendency, but to anticipate the fact that many have heard a gospel and have found salvation. The recognition of the tendency, therefore, is of grave

importance; and it is not to underestimate the importance, to find still further facts that call out in the hope of a gospel.

When the case of one's own tendency to do evil is met, there still remains, for sympathetic souls, the need of a cure for the evils, in all forms, which exist in the lives of others. And this last need cannot be provided for by merely preaching to others. Many do not listen to the preaching which is addressed to them. They do not subject themselves to the saving process which may be described to them. There can be little reasonable doubt that many in our midst die without having repented, and without having become rid of the inclination to do wrong. But when they are thus found in a lost condition, a soul that has long learned from the Supreme Spirit will care for their welfare still. And so a gospel becomes sought, for the mother bewailing her strong boy, who has died with no religious awakening; for the friend whose gay and admired companion has died caring only for the world; for the wife or sister of some broken man, who has started with promise so brilliant, but has succumbed to evil ways; and for millions of others of like experience, who in certain representations of the gospel have found little to comfort them.